They are one part 19th-century Luddites arguing that trade and global commerce (for the Luddites it was machines and the industrial revolution) will cause exploitation, unemployment and poverty. And they are one part 20th-century Marxists, justifying violence (they threw Molotov cocktails at the police) and control over markets, governments and privately owned business in the name of a greater good: a society in which everyone is equal. The Quebec City protesters prefer a lower standard of living equally shared to growing prosperity unequally distributed.

The important point is, given the above constraints, the 1996 utility restructuring law can hardly be called "deregulation." Strict regulations continued to abound. Worse, the rules affected two of the power market's most essential functions -- pricing and contracting. California thus got the worst of both worlds: higher-than-necessary power prices and lower-than-needed electricity supplies. It's no wonder Californians are irate.

In November and December of 2000, the market was driven by extreme cold, high natural has prices and low storage levels, and by low water, precipitation and stream flow levels. These conditions were made worse by an operating environment with a large number of outages and environmental constraints, and the general atmosphere of market uncertainty surrounding the extreme nature of these fundament factors. In this environment, power prices rose to extremely high levels for much of the period, levels above short-term power production costs and, if sustained, above long-term costs as well.

This isn't to say that power producers didn't want to construct new generating facilities in the Golden State. The industry asked to build 25 power plants in recent years, capable of producing 15,500 megawatts. This would have increased in-state power generation by more than one-third. It also would have represented more electricity than California currently imports. However, the agency responsible for siting and licensing approvals, the California Energy Commission, had, until recently, okayed only five of the units. In other words, California's rolling blackouts wouldn't have occurred had the commission acted in a more timely manner.

Bush was supposed to restore rationality to America's approach to environmental risk in the modern world. Instead, he has sought vainly to score points with soccer moms, Sierra Club dads and MTV deadheads. The result is a pale green policy mish-mash of environmental guacamole that's thoroughly indigestible.